Steele Criticizes Obama For Not Holding A Health Care Summit Last Year...Which He Did

February 25, 2010 10:45 am ET —
Matt Finkelstein

Today on MSNBC's
"Daily Rundown," RNC Chairman Michael Steele dismissed today's bipartisan
health care summit as a "dog and pony show." The beleaguered chairman added that
if President Obama was serious about working across the aisle, he should have
started off the reform process with a bipartisan event last year. But, as hosts Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie
quickly pointed out, Obama actually did hold
a
bipartisan summit last March:

STEELE:
This whole dog and pony show that we're
about to witness today is something that should have taken place a year ago,
when the administration first came in last February and laid out its agenda for
health care. This is how you should
have started it - bipartisan, public forum, CSPAN, your cameras rolling to
capture this and to capture, most importantly, what the American people
want. And right now, they want us to
start over, and I think we should.

TODD:
Chairman Steele, in fairness to them, I
mean, it was a year ago that they actually had a summit.

GUTHRIE:
On March 5th.

TODD:
And it wasn't just the legislative leaders.
They brought in folks from the industry as well. And that one was televised. So...does that one
not count? I'm just curious.

STEELE: Well, apparently it didn't. Because we don't
have health care.

Watch:

Perhaps Steele's
memory is fuzzy because on March 5th, when the summit was held, he
was busy fending off calls for his
resignation after a series of public gaffes.